tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post8319265527607888120..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: elision (not!)John Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-89289353984958599102013-03-21T01:57:20.304+00:002013-03-21T01:57:20.304+00:00Elision is also used to refer to the omission of s...Elision is also used to refer to the omission of sounds as a result of joining words together. I guess that in this case the journalist has used the term to indicate the amalgamation of separate entities, and the resultant omission of their respective characteristics. <br /><br />Whether or not it is 'proper' to use the word in this way, I'm in no more of a position to say than anyone else, but in my opinion it is a logical progression of our language...which has been occurring organically since well before the arrival of those Frenchy-Norman folk. Long may it last. ;)<br /><br /><br /><br />A Davishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14134892576076319371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-6527378517611762452010-07-15T16:35:00.627+01:002010-07-15T16:35:00.627+01:00At COCA 8/51 uses of "elided" look to me...At COCA 8/51 uses of "elided" look to me to be instances of the conflate/blend sense under discussion. This is not low frequency. The collocation "elide with" is telling.<br /><br />I wonder about the influence of the usage "differences are elided" or of metonymy. If distinguishing parts or aspects of concepts are "omitted" (older usage), then the wholes are "blended".<br /><br />BTW, "elided over" appeared in an Analog story. But that has a simple explanation: glide=>elide.DCDuringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07206973226720049961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-6276092780339634292010-07-14T07:54:56.710+01:002010-07-14T07:54:56.710+01:00No, no, I don't claim there always has to be a...No, no, I don't claim there always has to be a phonetic factor, only in the case of <i>elide, elision</i> the purely semantic side is so nebulous that a phonetic aspect might have played a role. That isn't the case in 'happy' -> 'silly', which are more or less in the same semantic field in many languages. (To prevent comments: I don't equate the concepts.)Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-79836456683935145332010-07-14T00:14:58.612+01:002010-07-14T00:14:58.612+01:00Well, there's no phonetic support for the sema...Well, there's no phonetic support for the semantic development from OE <i>sǣlig</i> 'happy, blissful' to ModE <i>silly</i> either. Semantic change is not necessarily (or even usually) constrained by formal factors.Mitko Sabevhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05716261390693316374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-58300947699281403852010-07-13T08:11:27.585+01:002010-07-13T08:11:27.585+01:00Thanks for bringing this! It's possible, but i...Thanks for bringing this! It's possible, but it still doesn't really convince me, also because the (original) term is too narrowly used in too narrow circles of users.<br /><br />Generally, the dictionary author's on the same hypothetical level as the attempts here. But as I mentioned, I at least don't have a better idea, and chances are we shan't find any documented intermediate stages or the like for any of the explanations.<br /><br />Somehow I'd prefer a solution that involves not only semantic but also phonetic similarities or overlaps, probably because the purely semantic explanations are far-fetched or complicated, involving invisible common thirds.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-47773285571381261662010-07-12T23:13:17.565+01:002010-07-12T23:13:17.565+01:00The New Oxford American Dictionary (which comes in...The New Oxford American Dictionary (which comes installed on Macs, mine being 2nd edition, 2005) does give a meaning like that, both for the noun and the verb:<br /><br /><b>elision</b> (...) the process of joining together or merging things, esp. abstract ideas : <i>unease at the elision of so many vital questions</i>.<br /><br /><b>elide</b> [ trans. ] (...) join together; merge : <i>whole periods of time are elided into a few seconds of screen time</i> | [ intrans. ] <i>the two things elided in his mind</i>.<br /><br />The verb entry then ends with a usage note conveniently proposing an explanation for this "deviant" extended sense (which quite closely echoes a <a href="http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/07/elision.html?showComment=1278600188621#c5263565418827098017" rel="nofollow">hypothesis</a> that was put forward in one of the earlier comments above): <br /><br />USAGE The standard meaning of the verb <b>elide</b> is ‘omit,’ most frequently used as a term to describe the way that some sounds or syllables are dropped in speech, e.g., in contractions such as <b>I'll</b> or <b>he's</b>. The result of such omission (or <b>elision</b>) is that the two surrounding syllables are merged; this fact has given rise to a new sense, with the meaning ‘join together, merge,’ as in : <i>the two things <b>elided</b> in his mind</i>. This new sense is now common in general use.Mitko Sabevhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05716261390693316374noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-20302540508139730892010-07-09T16:45:31.705+01:002010-07-09T16:45:31.705+01:00Of course - sorry if I sounded sarcastic. What I m...Of course - sorry if I sounded sarcastic. What I meant is that hardly anybody would know the technical term even if they sometimes encounter elided vowels in their lives, probably not even those who had Greek in school. And even then it's a big step from there to the meaning of merging (rather than <i>joining</i>).<br /><br />Not that I had a better idea.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-62914668667511780712010-07-09T16:36:06.039+01:002010-07-09T16:36:06.039+01:00Lipman
By googling hymn lyrics and th I've fo...Lipman<br /><br />By googling <i>hymn lyrics</i> and <i>th</i> I've found a plentiful sample of what I mean. The six seven alone involve five different initial vowel sounds:<br /><br /><i>th'almighty<br />th'oppressor<br />th'eternal<br />th'amazing<br />th'angelic<br />th'immortal</i><br /><br />True elision would consist of suppressing the <i>happ</i>Y vowel of <i>the</i>. What far more than "6" or "7" sing is a blend of two vowel sounds.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-86139871975390586172010-07-09T11:46:11.723+01:002010-07-09T11:46:11.723+01:00As a Guardian-reading non-phonetician, I read the ...As a Guardian-reading non-phonetician, I read the offending paragraph the other day without noticing anything awry. I think, like most people only casually acquainted with the term, I came across it when learning French at school when we were taught that 'elision' was the running together of adjacent words and have thought of it ever since as conveying a blurring of boundaries. I doubt that much attention was given to precisely what was elided - the omitted sound or the words on either side. I think the similarity between 'elide' and words like 'slide' and 'glide' possibly contributes something to the misapprehension.Ian Prestonhttp://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctp100/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-81261591507354437302010-07-09T09:02:15.790+01:002010-07-09T09:02:15.790+01:00The number of people you refer to is something lik...The number of people you refer to is something like "6" or "7", I gauge.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-59793137775686316082010-07-09T00:06:33.519+01:002010-07-09T00:06:33.519+01:00I think I've cracked it.
A number of people a...I think I've cracked it.<br /><br />A number of people associate elision <b><i>exclusively</i></b> with verse, and the elisions they think of are when a word-final vowel sound precedes a word-initial vowel sound. Instead of suppressing one of the vowels, they blend them. So, they conclude, <i>elision</i> means 'blending'.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-80816896460431189902010-07-08T21:47:24.828+01:002010-07-08T21:47:24.828+01:00in a happy confluence (or elision, even?) of my Wi...in a happy confluence (or elision, even?) of my Wikipedia-based procrastination and the coincidence of this blog post being made today, I came across today this sentence from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spork :<br /><br />'in an unsuccessful lawsuit in 1999... Justice Neuberger wrote: "I accept that the word Spork involves a clever idea of making a single word by eliding [the] beginning of the word spoon and the end of the word fork."'<br /><br />which as a linguist gives me a double-take -- surely it's the *end* of 'spoon' that's elided and the *beginning* of 'fork'. But Neuberger must have meant the "merge" sense.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10186726465918910238noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-88298416473440585972010-07-08T19:29:04.662+01:002010-07-08T19:29:04.662+01:00(Joe again, I do need a Google account).
Obviousl...(Joe again, I do need a Google account).<br /><br />Obviously we are dealing with low frequencies, but the sense of "conflation" (which actually i don't think quite captures the meaning) is so common in both COCA and BNC that I don't know if I would characterize it as a mere mistake. Here are some representative samples:<br /><br />1) "For these groups, "classy" and "classic" have become elided, identical."<br /><br />2) "Hilary Frome was ornamental rather than creditable, but the two things elided in his mind."<br /><br />3) "Over vast distances the monotonies, as well as the varieties and contrasts, elide with such painful gradualness one into another as to be scarcely noticeable."<br /><br />4) "in which the self-portrait was humorously elided with another of Munch's images, Madonna."<br /><br />5) ". . . is the persistent elision of "gender" with "women,"<br /><br />6) "In both texts, the authors elide medieval Islamic and ancient Greek identities in order to ridicule both traditions." <br /><br />One sense of "elide" here seems to mean an unfortunate conflation between two closely related concepts. Another sense of "elide" seems to be a gradual process where one gradually slips into another. And I also think these are related to the ordinary meaning of the word, but I don't really have to work this yet. But thanks for the observation, Professor Wells.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-80163182485062928192010-07-08T18:31:39.541+01:002010-07-08T18:31:39.541+01:00Speaking through my hat, I'd say that both mis...Speaking through my hat, I'd say that both misuses makes sense if they instead talked about "eliding the <em>differences</em> between the two subjects". <br /><br />So it may be that Beatrix Campbell has picked up "elision" in that context and then gone on to misremember or misconstrue it.Jens Knudsen (Sili)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14078875730565068352noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-20969715539818561812010-07-08T16:34:13.179+01:002010-07-08T16:34:13.179+01:00Of the 19 hits for "elided" in the BNC, ...Of the 19 hits for "elided" in the BNC, at least 5 are in the deprecated "conflated" sense. <br /><br />It seems to me that the confusion is similar to that between "replace" and "substitute". If X and Z are two things separated by Y, then eliding Y results in conflating X and Z.mollymoolynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-52635654188270980172010-07-08T15:43:08.621+01:002010-07-08T15:43:08.621+01:00The origin of the conflation meaning may have to d...The origin of the conflation meaning may have to do with French orthography. An elided vowel in the definite article is indicated by an apostrophe which also joins the article with the noun.<br /><br />l'arbre elided, joined<br />le garçon unelided, unjoined<br /><br />Of course, elision refers to the deletion of the vowel, but people may assume it refers to the joining of two forms and extend the meaning.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-12880239459381322172010-07-08T15:06:34.232+01:002010-07-08T15:06:34.232+01:00The proposed overlaps of meaning between elide and...The proposed overlaps of meaning between <i>elide</i> and <i>confuse</i> don't convince me, frankly. I rather suspect it's either quite arbitrary, filling an inkhorn term with some random meaning, or some weak similarity to an existing word.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-46946990584644967932010-07-08T14:11:40.045+01:002010-07-08T14:11:40.045+01:00Hi, me again, anonymous (Joe). I think David Crosb...Hi, me again, anonymous (Joe). I think David Crosbie and sorta agree, but I don't think violent impact really works here. I think it is more that the boundary two closely related concepts get lost. So if we think of two semantic fields as closely aligned, the loss of the border between them would me that they would be (crudely) merged. The reason why thw word "boundary" can be, er, elided, is due to pragmatics, and is kind of like cutting an end of a piece of wire. Technically, that's impossible, but we know that there is a pragmatic extension of "end" into some contextually defined area of the object in question. I think it's the same here: rather than saying something like, "the boundary gets elided," the idea is that the boundary is actually part of a given field, and that's why the word "boundary" can be elided. (I also think that one of the pairs has to be a smaller than the other, and thus can mistakely be construed as a subset, but I'm not sure if I am correct about that). <br /><br />Looking at various corpora that I have access to, I still haven't found an unambiguous use of this sense of "elide" prior to 1990.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-56141413919318600692010-07-08T13:36:34.723+01:002010-07-08T13:36:34.723+01:00Lipman
Ah yes, it was Anonymous. My glance 'e...Lipman<br /><br />Ah yes, it was Anonymous. My glance 'elided' the space below your posting.<br /><br />If I'm right, then the semantic influence is to suggest <i>conflation</i> etc <b><i>through violent impact</i></b>.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-58063450526344493792010-07-08T13:17:36.710+01:002010-07-08T13:17:36.710+01:00Wasn't I, but collide as an intermediary step ...Wasn't I, but <i>collide</i> as an intermediary step is interesting. That would imply first <i>collide</i> was used in the meaning of other <i>co(n)-</i> words such as <i>conflate, confuse, collate</i>, then the meaning was associated with the <i>-lide</i> part as well. Possible, but quite strange.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-41073414868514974672010-07-08T12:59:40.493+01:002010-07-08T12:59:40.493+01:00The OED recognises three senses
1. To destroy, an...The OED recognises three senses<br /><br />1. To destroy, annihilate (the force of evidence) — obsolete except in the legal sense:<br /><br />b. <i>Law</i>, esp. Sc. To annul, do away with, quash, rebut. [So <i>elidere</i> in Roman Law.]<br /><br />2. To strike out, suppress, pass over in silence.<br /><br />3. <i>Gram</i>. To omit (a vowel, or syllable) in pronunciation. Hence <b>elided</b> <i>ppl. a</i><br /><br />The citations for sense [2] show that, as used in the nineteenth century, <b>elided</b> would convey that the Normans and French were written out of history. Compare, for example,<br /><br /><b>1851</b> SIR F. PALGRAVE <i>Norm. & Eng</i>. I. 750 Gibbon and Sismondi have elided these monarchs.<br /><br />I'm sure that Lipman's analysis is right that the notion 'difference' is understood — indeed, elided. However, I suspect that there may be some interference from the word <b>collide</b> and its associations.David Crosbiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01858358459416955921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-5319480422745330982010-07-08T11:27:21.748+01:002010-07-08T11:27:21.748+01:00Interesting observation. Here's my guess. I th...Interesting observation. Here's my guess. I think the relevant definition of "elide" is 1) the action of dropping out or suppression." In each of the cases, there is something that is dropped out or suppressed. In the first example,it is the distinction between the French and the Normans that is "elided." In the second, it is the distinction between changes in 20th century life and the collapse of civilization more generally. I myself might use "conflate," but "elide" might have more of negative reading (i.e., the unscientific prejudice that elision is somehow lazy or sloppy?) <br /><br />By the by, the earliest reference to this use of "elide" I found in the BNC was from 1990:<br /><br />"While Dawkins can not be blamed for it, modern enthusiasm for the "enterprise society" may explain why his parable of selfish genes has commonly been elided with the selfish intentions of individuals."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-76481443616895724852010-07-08T09:14:39.589+01:002010-07-08T09:14:39.589+01:00Still, where does that "elision" come fr...Still, where does that "elision" come from? Can't think of a satisfyingly similar word.Phillip Mindenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16801818752833289089noreply@blogger.com